Page 59 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“She’s taken off again, hasn’t she?” Wayland asked.

“Yes. She’s not in the Pilsen apartment, or any of her usual haunts.”

His smile was faint but sincere. “And you, always seeking.”

“I have to, Way. You know I do.”

“Calla’s in Deer Creek. At least, I think so. We still share a credit card. I keep meaning to cancel it. The last charge was for a gas station outside of town.”

“What’s she doing in Wisconsin?”

“I don’t know. But I hope she’s happy. Despite what you might believe about me, Viv, I will always want her to flourish. She’s family.”

As he spoke, he ran his hand over the top of the grass, like a barber inspecting a buzzcut. His socks, she noticed, were sprinkled with tiny black skulls. Vivi debated telling Wayland about the letter and sketch;the journal in Arles; what she thought awaited them inVi?tNam. But in the end, she didn’t say a word. It was a secret between sisters.

He stopped grazing the grass. He took her hand, then held it up against the sun, a five-fingered blemish over the bright stretch of sky.

“No antlers?” he asked.

“Calla has it.”

“I never knew which one of you would be wearing that ring in a given week.”

It was an impractical piece of jewelry. The prongs sometimes resembled thorns and over the years, they often caught on stray threads and got in the way of Vivi’s work at the Forster. But she never took it off unless forced.

As soon as Calla saw the ring on Vivi’s finger, one cool spring evening as they played Seekers in the woods, she cajoled and pouted and bargained until Vivi promised they could take turns.Starting now?Calla had asked. The very moment Vivi handed the ring over, Calla slid it onto her thumb, because it was too large for any of her other fingers. Outwardly, Vivi had given her sister an indulgent smile, but she fought an internal surge of annoyance. Now that May was gone, they were left scavenging over the scraps of her, like starving baby vultures. Somewhere within her young mind, Vivi realized that scarcity would become the lens through which they viewed all beautiful things.

Wayland let her hand drop. “Did I ever tell you about my documentary? It’s about a group living in this remote settlement in the Andes. They call themselves Los Brillantes, the Bright Ones. They believe in metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls. There’s a big ritual after every death in the community in which they redirect the departed souls where they want them to go.

“I didn’t really buy into anything they said when I first met them. But somewhere along the way, I began thinking of belief and mythology, and how both are intrinsically linked to longing. Isn’t the belief in reincarnation simply a desire to keep the person you’ve lost? The alternative—livingwith aloneness—might be too much for the human constitution to bear.”

“Who wants to live with aloneness?” An edge of defensiveness knifed into her question, which was only rhetorical on its surface.

“Some could ask: who wants to live with all that combustible hope?”

A giant bee looped between them. Its buzz grew louder and its down brushed her cheek. They sat motionless, as if spelled by the hum of the bee, the echo of his question.

She said, “Go ahead. Tell me what you want to tell me.”

“I’m trying to say that you are drowning in your own longing, Vivi. Your belief in whatwasinstead of what is. You want so badly to reach Calla, to save her from herself, but you never consider the possibility of simply letting her go.”

“But when we played Seekers—”

“Fuck the games. We’re adults now.” His voice rose, startling the bee. It flew off into the grass, then made a drunken path toward the runners near the lake. He lowered his voice. “Maybe all of us should find a way to let the past finally die.”

“I’m not sure how to do that.”

“You’ll figure it out. You always do. Never forget that you and your sister are survivors.”

He was right. They had survived everything life pitched their way. But it’d never mean anything if they didn’t have each other. He saw the look on her face and sighed.

“Go on. You know she’s waiting for you there.”

Chapter 18

Vivi turned off the exit for Deer Creek. The same scraggly branch jangled against the welcome sign, as if it hadn’t been clipped once in the years since she’d lived there. The sign was a faded landscape undertaken by a Kinkade enthusiast whose brief sojourn in the town was characterized by florid public works projects and bad checks. The overlaid white script read:Deer Creek: A Home for the Generations. Behind the lettering, the artist had painted a lush village with stone houses and a wide, sunlit creek. It didn’t bear any resemblance to the town Vivi had known.

There were few creeks left in their hometown; forty years ago the land had become parched as a piece of stale toast. Some told urban legends of a Satanist cult that had sucked the land dry in a ritual sacrifice. More practical speculators said that an unexpected drought had wreaked havoc on all the local bodies of water in the late eighties. In either case, only a handful of rivulets ran through now.